Organizers

Steve Hranilovic

Co-Chair

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, McMaster University
hranilovic (at) mcmaster (dot) ca

Dr. Steve Hranilovic (S'94-M'03-SM'07) received the B.A.Sc. degree with honours in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1997 and M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada in 1999 and 2003 respectively. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. During 2010-2011 he spent his research leave as Senior Member, Technical Staff in Advanced Technology for Research in Motion, Waterloo, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of free-space and wired optical communications, digital communication algorithms, and electronic and photonic implementation of coding and communication algorithms. He is the author of the book Wireless Optical Communications Systems (New York:Springer, 2004). Dr. Hranilovic is a licensed Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario and was awarded the Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2006. He currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications in the area of Optical Wireless Communications as well as the IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking in the area of Free-Space Optics.

Takaya Yamazato

Co-Chair

Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University
yamazato (at) nagoya-u (dot) jp

Dr. Takaya Yamazato (S’91–M’93) is a professor at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan. He received a Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1993. From 1993 to 1998, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Electronics, Nagoya University, Japan. From 1997 to 1998, he was a visiting researcher at the Research Group for RF Communications, University of Kaiserslautern, German. In 1998, he gave a half-day tutorial entitled “Introduction to CDMA ALOHA” at Globecom held in Sydney, Australia. Since then, he has been serving as a TPC member of Globecom and ICC. In 2006, he received the IEEE Communication Society’s Best Tutorial Paper Award. He served as the co-chair of the Wireless Communication Symposia of ICC 2009 and was the co-chair of Selected Areas in Communication Symposia of ICC 2011. From 2008 to 2010, he served as the chair of the Satellite and Space Communication Technical Committee. In 2011, he gave a half-day tutorial entitled “Visible Light Communication” at ICC 2011 held in Kyoto, Japan. He currently serves as the Director of Asia-Pacific Board, IEEE Communication Society. His research interests include visible light communication (VLC), intelligent transport system (ITS), stochastic resonance (SR), and open educational resources (OER).

Zhengyuan (Daniel) Xu

Co-Chair

National "1000 Talents Plan" Professor,
Director, Wireless-Optical Communications Key Lab of Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science, University of Science and Technology of China.
xuzy (at) ustc (dot) edu (dot) cn

Dr. Zhengyuan (Daniel) Xu (S'97–M'99–SM'02) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1989 and 1991, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ, USA, in 1999. From 1991 to 1996, he was with Tsinghua Unisplendour Group Corporation, Tsinghua University, as System Engineer and Department Manager. In 1999, he joined University of California, Riverside, first as Assistant Professor and then tenured Associate Professor and Professor. He was Founding Director of the multi-campus Center for Ubiquitous Communication by Light (UC-Light), University of California. In 2010, he was selected by the “Thousand Talents Program” of China, appointed as Professor at Tsinghua University, and then joined University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He is Founding Director of the Optical Wireless Communication and Network Center of USTC, Founding Director of Wireless-Optical Communications Key Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Chief Scientist of the National Key Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China. His research focuses on wireless communication and networking, optical wireless communications, geolocation, intelligent transportation, and signal processing. He has published over 200 journal and conference papers. He has served as an Associate Editor and Guest Editor for different IEEE journals, and serves as Associate Editor for the OSA/SIOM journal Photonics Research and Guest Editor for IEEE JSAC—Special Issue on Optical Wireless Communications. He was a Founding Chair of IEEE Workshop on Optical Wireless Communications.

Dominic O'Brien

Co-Chair

Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.
dominic.obrien (at) eng (dot) ox (dot) ac (dot) uk

Dr. Dominic O'Brien is a Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, and leads the optical wireless communications group. He gained MA (1991) and PhD (1993) Degrees from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. From 1993-1995 he was a NATO fellow at the Optoelectronic Computing Systems Center at the University of Colorado. His current research is in the field of optical wireless systems. He is the author or co-author of approximately 150 publications or patents in the area of optics and optoelectronics.

Koji Kamakura

Vice Chair

Professor, Department of Computer Science, Chiba Institute of Technology.
kama (at) cs (dot) it-chiba (dot) ac (dot) jp

Koji Kamakura (S'99–M'02) received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1997, 1999, and 2002, respectively. He is a Professor at Department of Computer Science, Chiba Institute of Technology, Chiba, Japan. From 2002 to 2006, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan. From 2006 to 2015, he was an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science, Chiba Institute of Technology, Chiba, Japan. He was a Visiting Professor at Heudiasyc, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, from April 2013 to March 2014. He was a Visiting Scientist at the School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in 2002 and 2003. From 2000 to 2002, he was a Special Researcher of Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion for Science, for Japanese Junior Scientists. His research interests include optical communication theory and system analysis. He is a Member of the IEICE. He received the 14th Telecom System Technology Award for Students from the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation in 1999 and the Ericsson Young Scientist Award in 2002.

Yusuke Kozawa

Secretary

Assistant Professor at Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Ibaraki University.
kozawa (at) ieee (dot) org

Dr. Yusuke Kozawa (S'06--M'12) received his B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in computer and information science from Ibaraki University in 2007, 2009, and 2012, respectively. He was an assistant professor at Tokyo University of Science from 2012 to 2016. Since 2017, he has been an assistant professor at Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Ibaraki University. His current research interests include free-space optical communications and visible light communications.